"Tentmakers" in Minneapolis

Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles, so that in case they speak against you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

My aim this morning is to inspire you to look at your secular
vocation here in Minneapolis the way you would look at it if you
were called by God to do this exact same vocation as a "tentmaker"
among an unreached people overseas.

What Is a "Tentmaker"?

Not all of you may be familiar with the word "tentmaker" and
what it stands for. Let me explain. The apostle Paul traveled
throughout the Roman world for 20-some years spreading the gospel
and starting churches. Sometimes churches supported his ministry,
like the church in Philippi (2:25; 4:14–18). Rarely did he even asked
for support, like when he wanted the church in Rome to help fund
his trip to Spain (Romans 15:24). And he certainly believed it was
right and proper that missionaries and pastors be paid by
Christians (1 Corinthians 9:14; 1 Timothy 5:17–18).

But in fact he almost never accepted money from the churches. Instead he says to the church at Thessalonica: "You remember our
labor and toil, brethren; we worked night and day, that we might
not burden any of you, while we preached to you the gospel of God"
(1 Thessalonians 2:9).

What did he do to earn money? Acts 18:3 says that Paul stayed
with Aquilla and Priscilla because they were of the same trade,
namely, tentmakers. So in a sense you could say Paul's traveling
band of men was a traveling band of merchants who worked when
they had to, making and repairing and selling tents. And when they
had enough money to live on, they preached the gospel and taught the
new Christians what it meant to follow Jesus in their homes and
vocations.

This is where the term "tentmakers" comes from.

A tentmaker today is a person who supports himself in another
culture in order to make known the reality of Jesus Christ and
build his church.

A tentmaker is a person who believes that Christians ought to
be engaged in thousands of secular vocations, but who believes the
product or service he is providing is always secondary to the
effect he has on people's lives through his work.

A tentmaker has set his eyes on things that are eternal.

And so God has helped him see that making money, getting
promotions, becoming well-known are at best secondary means to what
really counts for eternity, namely, God being glorified and people
coming to know and trust him.

And then tentmakers look at the cities of the unreached
peoples where there are no churches, and no Christians, and they
hear God's call to go to these cities and live there and work there
in order to bring the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in
the gospel.

Tentmaking as a Strategy to Reach the Unreached

For example, take the Sultanate of Oman. It's small country (1.2
million) at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Its state religion is
Ibadi Islam. Patrick Johnstone estimates perhaps 40 indigenous
Christians in two small Arabic speaking groups.

I received a letter from Ruth Siemens this summer about the
opportunities in Oman. Ruth is the director of Global Opportunities
in Pasadena, California. She said that 12 years ago it was against
the law to wear glasses in Oman! That's how anti-western they were.
Now there is a younger ruler with significantly different policies.
Then listen to this paragraph about tentmaking opportunities in
this so-called closed country.

I write because we have more than 1,100 current well-paying
openings in Oman to be filled by this autumn and next spring. We
would be excited if there were just ten! God has not only set
before us an open door, but a gate. He has made a wide breach in
the wall! We must believe this is God's moment for Christians to
enter this country with the Gospel! (Letter dated July 1988.)

The letter closes with this P.S.

We also have six well-paying English teaching jobs that can put
Christians among south central USSR peoples, like the Kazakhs,
Kirghizes, Turkmens, Tajiks, and Uzbeks. Imagine!

I believe one of the goals that God will give us as a church for
the next decade is that a significant percentage of our church will
take three year assignments (or longer) to do your secular vocation
in a foreign urban center among peoples with virtually no
Christians among them.

This must be part of our overall strategy to penetrate unreached
peoples! First, because the amazing opportunities are there—thousands of jobs everywhere enable lay Christians like you to live
in other countries and make Jesus Christ known. Second, because the
cost of sending vocational missionaries is skyrocketing. Third,
because at least 60% of the world's population is off-limits to
traditional missionaries, like China and most of the Muslim and
Hindu world. Fourth, because Christians living for Christ in the
secular workplace are crucial models for new believers in these
unreached groups.

It is not an easy life. It would require training and strength
and constant recommitment under the pressures of the work place and
the foreign culture. But by the power of the Holy Spirit and for
the glory of the One who loved us enough to be crucified for us, it
is possible. I get very excited when I think about Bethlehem
getting a mindset where it is just assumed that we will train and
send both vocational missionaries and tentmakers, and support them
with the kind of prayer and inspirational communication that does
not let them fail.

Tentmaking and the Twin Cities

The reason for telling you all this is to begin to make the
connection in your mind that God has been making in mine, namely,
the connection between tentmaking and Minneapolis (or the Twin
Cities).

There are well over 1,000 Christian churches in the Twin Cities.
Let's say 1,500. Suppose that each of these churches averaged 300
people in church every weekend, which is a very high guess since
most of the churches are smaller than that. That would be 450,000
people in the Twin Cities in worship each weekend. There are over
2,000,000 people in the greater Twin Cities. That would mean 77% of
the people (1,550,000) in the Twin Cities are not in worship on any
given weekend. Some of those are Christians who for one reason or
another aren't there. And just as many of those who are there are
not true Christians.

So it is a fair estimate that no more than 23% of the people in
this metropolitan area are committed to Jesus Christ as Lord and
Savior.

Now if you ask, What is God's strategy for winning these people,
the answer is tentmaking. In other words, God wants you to see your
job primarily in terms of its strategic effect in making him known.
And when I say that, I have in mind more than witnessing over lunch—as utterly crucial as that is!

Five Ways to Make God Known at Work

I have in mind at least five things—five ways to make God
known through your secular job and all of them are important. When
one of them is missing, the witness to the truth of Christ
suffers.

First, the excellence of the products or services you render
in your job shows the excellence and greatness of God.

Second, the standards of integrity you follow at your job
show the integrity and holiness of God.

Third, the love you show to people in your job shows the love
of God.

Fourth, the stewardship of the money you make from your job
shows the value of God compared to other things.

Fifth, the verbal testimony you give to the reality of Christ
shows the doorway to all these things in your life and their
possibility in the lives of others.

If the Twin Cities are going to be evangelized, it's going to
happen mainly through "tentmakers." And for some of you that will
mean a rethinking of why you have the job you do. It will mean a
new commitment to do in Minneapolis and St. Paul what we aim to do
in sending tentmakers to Muscat, the capital of Oman.

The Biblical Basis: Three Points

So let me try to encourage you to go ahead with this rethinking
of your calling by giving you a biblical basis for seeing
yourselves as tentmakers in Minneapolis. Three basic points from 1
Peter.

1. God's Chosen People

As believers in Christ, you are God's chosen people.

1 Peter 2:9, 10:

(9) But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, God's own people . . . (10) Once you were no people but now
you are God's people; once you had not received mercy but now you
have received mercy.

Verse 10 shows that this letter is most likely written to Gentiles, rather than mainly to Jews. But then it applies to us
converted gentiles the great Old Testament promises made to Israel.
We were once no people. But now we have been shown mercy and are
chosen by God to be his own people.

That is the first foundation stone of tentmaking. You have
experienced something overwhelmingly important from God. He called
you. You believed. And now you are his and that is overwhelmingly
important—more important than anything else in your life. That
is the first foundation of your calling as a tentmaker in
Minneapolis.

2. Aliens and Exiles in the World

As God's people you are aliens and exiles in the world.

In Oman 15% of the population are foreign workers. They are
aliens from Iran, India, Pakistan, Britain, the U.S., etc. They
don't have a citizenship there. They are not quite at home. But
they work there.

That's the way we are supposed to see ourselves in relation to
the world as it is now in sin.

1 Peter 1:1:

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To the exiles of the
Dispersion . . .

This was a term applied to Jews who were scattered outside their
homeland of Israel. Now it is applied to Gentiles who are scattered
outside their homeland of heaven.

1 Peter 1:17:

And if you
invoke as Father him who judges each one impartially
according to his deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the
time of your exile.

That means throughout the time of your life on this earth until we meet God at the judgment seat.

1 Peter 2:11:

Beloved, I beseech you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the
passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul.

This verse gets at the practical meaning of being aliens and
exiles in Minneapolis. It means that your soul belongs to God, and
that there are forces in this world that are waging war against
your soul and which aim to capture it from God and destroy it.
So there will be real tensions as you work in this foreign
world.

3. Different Goals

As you work in the world as the exiled people of God, your
goals for being here will be different from those around you.

1 Peter 2:9:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him
who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

This is why you have been chosen by God, and sent into the
secular world as aliens—to make known the wonderful deeds of
God, especially the work of God in saving you personally.

Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles, so that in case they
speak against you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and
glorify God on the day of visitation.

The aim of your life among the secular world of Minneapolis is
to work and live in such a way that they will be compelled, sooner
or later, to confess that God was real in you and he is
glorious.

Summary

Let me sum up then this simple basis for your thinking of your
job in the Twin Cities in terms of tentmaking.

First, as believers in Christ, you are God's chosen
people.

Second, as God's people you are aliens and exiles in the
secular world.

Third, God wants you there (1 Peter 2:13) and he wants your
goals for being there to be different from those around you:

the excellence of your products or services,

the standards of your integrity,

the love you show to people,

the way your spend your salary, and

the verbal testimony you give . . .

all these will be done to show people the God you love and
the desire you have that people come to know him and believe and be
saved.

Would you take a moment now to take a look at your own goals? Why do you have the job you have? Do you have the mindset of a
tentmaker—that everything will be done to make Christ known?
Perhaps as the organ plays you would like to pray and rededicate
yourself to this great calling.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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